Program Notes
Edvard Grieg (1843-1907)
The Ballade in the Form of Variations on a Norwegian Folk Song is a set of fourteen variations, with a final coda. Grieg wrote to a friend that he had written Opus 24 “with my life’s blood in days of sorrow and despair…. It has been dark and depressing, and I have been living shut in amid reflections of all kinds. What I have written during this time is marked by it.” His marriage was in crisis (it may be that his wife Nina was having an affair with his brother, John) and both of his parents had just died. Nearly thirty years later, Grieg reflected on this time in his life: “What a piece of the world disappears with one’s own mother! There is no other sorrow like it….The mystery of death cannot be argued out of existence. This is the mystery for which I have wanted to find a suitable expression” (Gregory Martin, Grieg as Storyteller: The Poetics of the Ballade, Op. 24 ).
Grieg never performed this piece in public, but he did play it in a private performance for Dr. Max Abraham, who was director of the Peters publishing firm. “According to witnesses, he put his entire soul into the interpretation – when he was finished, he was completely exhausted, and so agitated and shaken that he could not say a word for a long time afterwards” (Dag Schjelderup-Ebbe).
Grieg is known for his short lyric pieces for solo piano (and of course, the great concerto). However, this work is significant – around 20 minutes. Grieg pays tribute to composers by quoting them or alluding to their music, including Robert Schumann (his favorite composer), Mendelssohn, and Debussy. However, the most significant tribute is reserved for Chopin. His decision to call it a “ballade” places it in the tradition begun by Chopin, plus the first part of Variation 5 is a clear reference to the introduction of Chopin’s first Ballade, also in G minor. (For those interested scholars amongst us, there is a left-hand figuration identical to bar 183 in Chopin’s third ballade).
Though once in the repertoire of Rubinstein, Rachmaninoff, and Brahms, this work is rarely programmed now, particularly in the United States. We are fortunate to hear it today.
Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) published Gaspard de la Nuit in 1909 based on the 1842 poems of Aloysius Bertrand. Those poetic images help the listener gain access, and Ravel felt strongly that performers should know the literary references. The same is true for us in the audience.
Ondine is a water sprite who seduces men with her mesmerizing voice (think sirens in Odysseus). Though soulless, Ondine is immortal. She can gain a soul by luring a man to her underwater palace where he can be King (and soon, dead as a mackerel of course). Not strangely perhaps, the man she has chosen is not receptive. The last 30 seconds of the piece represent this stanza: “And when I told her that I was in love with a mortal woman, she flew into an angry sulk, shed a few tears, let out a peal of laughter, then vanished in a sudden shower which streamed in pale rivulets down my blue window panes.”*
Bertrand’s text behind Le Gibet (The Gallows) can fairly, I think, be described as grim, grim, grim. The poem opens with: “Ah! And is that the north wind I hear, shrieking in the night, or is it the hanged man uttering a sigh from the gallows?” Each stanza gets worse, until it ends: “It is the bell that sounds from the walls of a town beyond the horizon and the carcass of a hanged man reddening in the setting sun.” With deep respect for Ravel, I can boldly state that this would not send me to the piano in a rush of creativity. But thankfully, somehow for him, it did!
Scarbo (Goblin) is the portrayal of a diabolical dwarf whose music is eerie, chaotic and somewhat disturbed. Perhaps Scarbo is imagined, tweaked by the flickering of a bedside candle. Bertrand (about whom I have begun to worry) wrote: “How often have I seen him drop to the floor, pirouette on one foot and tumble around the room like the fallen spindle from a witch’s distaff.” The piece implies fear but not mortal danger – similar to seeing a circus or listening to a scary story.
Ravel told his student, Vlado Perlmuter, that he wanted to create a “caricature of romanticism.” Then he added: “Maybe I got carried away.” The formidable technique required for this piece must work in tandem with the artistry inherent in the music. Scottish pianist Steven Osborne, who has recorded all of Ravel’s piano music, has said: “Part of the great difficulty of the piece is that none of its complications are gratuitous – every note is part of a precise effect, and the textures are generally very transparent. In other words, there’s nowhere to hide.”
Ravel admitted that he wanted to make a piece more difficult than Balakirev’s Islamay (Scriabin injured his right hand practicing Islamay). It would seem that he succeeded. Staggering power and equally staggering technique are prerequisites. The juggling act our performer must display in order to execute the pieces is to balance his own reactions to the music, all the while maintaining control of his technique. We are in for a treat.
*Translations by Paul Roberts and Jenny Gilbert
Frederic Chopin (1810-1849)
The solo piano ballade originated with Frederic Chopin, who was greatly influenced by the poetry of his fellow Polish ex-pat, Adam Mickiewicz. Mickiewicz wrote ballads, which were poems in epic drama style, often with demonic or mystical characteristics. However, these four ballades do not tell stories in the literal sense, but are dramatic in their variety and intensity. Timothy Judd calls them “wordless poetic dramas.” Besides Grieg, composers such as Liszt, Brahms and Fauré followed in Chopin’s footsteps with their own ballades.
We will all have our own impressions of what we are hearing, and as Chopin never wrote of any specific connections, it is necessary to avoid any overlay of imagery. All four are distinct, exciting, beautiful, single movement works. Dramatically contrasting sections often repeat thematic material over their course, with each piece ending with a fantastic coda.
The first ballade is dedicated to Baron Nicolas von Stockhausen, the Hanoverian ambassador to France. The second is dedicated to Robert Schumann in return for Schumann having dedicated “Kreisleriana” to Chopin. The third goes to his pupil, Madame Pauline de Noailles. The fourth lists Madame Nathaniel de Rothschild, who introduced Chopin to many aristocrats in Paris. Her husband was a businessman, banker and winemaker (heirs reestablished the Rothschild wine excellence). So there you have it: a politican, a composer, a student, and a rich woman with lots of contacts. Fame, it has been ever thus.
This will not be one of those times when you wonder if the pieces are over. Simply listen and ride along. It’s fair to say that the third ballade is the lightest in character. Of the fourth ballade, English pianist John Ogdon said, “the most exalted, intense and sublimely powerful of all Chopin’s compositions… Listening to the opening bars, you might get the sense that the music began at some earlier point, but is only now audible.”
As Debussy observed, “By the very nature of his genius, the music of Chopin escapes any classification.”
Copyright by Diane Baxter©
